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Fruit Salad

A chilled salad of oranges, pineapple, celery, nuts, and lemon juice, served on lettuce with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain juice from the fruit.

  2. Mix fruit with sugar, celery, and nut meats; chill.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, mix the fruit with salad dressing.

  2. Place the salad on tender lettuce leaves.

  3. Add a little salad dressing on top.

  4. Garnish with a candied cherry.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + celerytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main fruit body, with juicy sections giving moisture and fresh flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw out fruit juices as it chills.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit and helps slow browning of cut fruit.
Pineapple
Adds sweetness and a tangy, juicy note that balances the citrus.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Mix in the dressing only when ready to serve. Adding dressing at the last moment keeps the celery and nuts crisp and stops the fruit from releasing extra liquid and turning soggy while it sits.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar, celery, meat):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, sugar, celery, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More fruit salad recipes

Dressing 41Ambrosia 24Pineapple 21Grape 15Frozen 10Mixed 8 See all 267 →

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